Once again we are looking at second generation SandForce based SSDs. Today we will introduce to you several consumer solid state drives from Kingston. Although these drives are built with typical components, they boast some very unique features and peculiarities.

Kingston SSDNow V+200 240 GB

The SSDNow V+200 is the junior consumer-class SSD series from Kingston. We tested the 120GB model some time ago and now we’ve got a 240 GB sample.

We received it as a bare SSD without any accessories. Unlike the above-discussed HyperX 3K and HyperX, the SSDNow V+200 has a typical aluminum case like other makers' products. It looks good thanks to the rough texture of the powder coating. There’s a large and pretty-looking label on the case that reports key product specs.

The quality of assembly is high. The two halves of the SSD case are neatly fitted together and there’s stiff heat-conductive material inside between the PCB and the case.

Considering the low price of the SSDNow V+220 and its somewhat lower specified speed (compared to the other Kingston SSDs), we might guess that it uses asynchronous flash memory. However, when benchmarking the 120 GB model from this series, we found it to employ synchronous memory in asynchronous mode. The 240 GB model is free from that paradox, though. It is equipped with an SF-2281 controller and MLC NAND chips from Micron. Labeled as 29F128G08CFAAA, this is true asynchronous flash memory in 25nm chips manufactured on the facilities of the joint venture IMFT. Each chip contains two 64-gigabit NAND devices and, since the 240 GB SSD employs as many as 16 chips, the SandForce controller uses 4-way interleave when accessing them. Thanks to that, the SSDNow V+200 240GB is going to be considerably faster than its 120 GB cousin which could only use 2-way interleave.

We can only add that the use of asynchronous instead of synchronous flash memory makes the end product cheaper. The SSDNow V+200 costs 15-20% less than the HyperX 3K and is very close to the $1 per 1 GB barrier.